The present invention relates to an IC card portable terminal apparatus for selectively reading out various transaction data or sum data from an IC card which is used as a credit card or electronic-money and supports a plurality of applications, and displaying the readout data.
Recently, IC cards each incorporating an IC chip having control devices including a ROM (Read Only Memory), a RAM (Random Access Memory), and a CPU (Central Processing Unit) for controlling these memories are used as portable storage media in various industrial fields.
When an IC card of this type is used as a credit card or electronic-money, various transaction data or sum data stored in the card can be conveniently selectively read out and displayed, as needed.
For this purpose, an IC card portable terminal apparatus that a user can always carry has recently been developed. The IC card portable terminal apparatus is compact and lightweight, like the IC card, and has a keyboard, a liquid crystal display unit, and a battery serving as a power supply for the self operation and the IC card. Upon inserting an IC card into the apparatus, various transaction data or sum data is selectively read out from the IC card in accordance with keyboard operations and displayed on the liquid crystal display unit.
In such an IC card portable terminal apparatus, when data is to be read out from an IC card which supports a plurality of applications and for which a password is set, generally, key verification or authentication must be performed in units of applications or every time data is to be read out. In this case, even when passwords for key verification necessary to read out data are identical, the password must be input every time data is to be read out. For this reason, the apparatus requires cumbersome operations, and is inconvenient to use.
The IC card portable terminal apparatus for handling an IC card which supports a plurality of applications can support only a limited number of applications. When an application to be supported is added on the IC card, the data of the added application cannot be read out unless the control program is changed/added on the portable terminal side. The control unit of such a portable terminal apparatus is generally formed as an IC, and change/addition of the control unit is virtually impossible. Therefore, no application can be easily added on the IC card side.
In addition, in such an IC card portable terminal apparatus, when necessary data is to be read out from an IC card, and a password (e.g., a password number) for key verification must be input to read out an application, the apparatus must be equipped with a ten-key pad for inputting the password. This impedes not only size reduction of the keyboard unit but also size reduction of the apparatus main body.